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You Will Love This!

We finished the Consider the Ants lessons today in Bible Class and it was so much fun! The children really loved it and it was fun watching them enjoy. It was mid afternoon when we were finally able to close the building and head home. My husband decided to get a bite of lunch to eat before the hour drive home. While there, we saw a girl who had visited the church long ago. She was working there and we enjoyed catching up. Then she very excitedly showed us a signature ... Eric Roberts ... he was eating in the back of the restaurant just feet away! Turns out he's filming a new movie, Deadline, at the courthouse in Pulaski, TN (not two blocks from the church building). And yesterday Julia was there!

Our friend was all upset that she didn't have a way to get a picture with him. I take my camera to church to take pictures of the children in class, so I let her borrow it and said I'd e-mail her the pictures. We ate. I'm not a moviestar groupie and though it was a little neat, I wasn't thinking about disturbing him. How awful their lives must be, bothered by strangers all the time. We joined hands and prayed that he and Julia and all their loved ones would be saved if they aren't already.

Well, about a half hour later when we were ready to leave, Ken decides he is going to try to get a picture with him. Frankly I was embarrassed, but followed at a distance. He went right up to him, shook hands and one of Eric's group took a picture. Eric insisted I come over and next thing I know he's wrapped both arms around me and is calling me "darlin"... it was astonishing how quickly a woman my age turned into a silly 12 yr. old girl! It was fun and he was SOOOO sweet and gracious! I'm so surprised at myself, but it was fun. Ken's pic turned out great, but mine not so very. This is the best I could fix it up in PS. It should look it's best small here. That's ME and Eric Roberts!!! Ahhhh! :) Ok, back to my age again! Bet you wish you'd gone to church today...wonder who you might have met! LOL!Download Consider The Ants printables here. Check out my TERMS OF USE here.The password is jesuschristislord.DigifreeCraftCraveCraftCrave

It's been years since I read all the way through the Bible. It was a wonderful time spiritually and I've decided to do it again...but with a twist this time! The wonderful people at BibleGateway who give us our daily Bible verse and who I use for every post also offer SEVEN different plans to read through the Bible in a year in your choice of translation and language! I've chosen to do it chronologically! It's being soooo different!

When I was a new babe in Christ I started at the beginning of the Bible and read straight through until I got hopelessly lost and overwhelmed somewhere in the Old Testament. I didn't know that the events in the books aren't necessarily in chronological order and once the kingdom split between Israel and Judah it just kept getting more and more confusing.

I'm LOVING reading it chronologically and now feel badly that my parents gave my husband and I a chronological Bible one year for Christmas so many years ago...which we looked at in confusion and put on the shelf without ever reading. I'm getting a time context that I have been lacking. Reading it on line through BibleGateway is being great too...I can view as large as I want and as I read each section, the link changes color so it's easy to keep track of where I am!

I'm not very good at self-discipline lately and I'd love a partner/partners to do this with. You could use any plan you wanted, but we could be there to encourage each other on to victory! If there is a good response, I'd do something here on the blog for it and maybe even offer free kits from the store to those who participate successfully each month or something. I'm open to ideas. So, if you are interested, drop me a line at lynettesmail@bellsouth.net or comment at the bottom of this post and leave me your e-mail so we can be in touch!

I made this layout of my precious great niece. I wish you could see her face, she is soooo beautiful and don't you love that strawberry blond hair! Have a great day! I used one of Jenn Lindsey's fabulous blend templates found at www.jenlindesigns.wordpress.com, and things from http://barbara-justpassingthrough.blogspot.com, http://monscrapapetitspas.blogspot.com, autumn by jolagg, http://lenascrapbooking.blogspot.com. Text adapted from "Daughter" by L.J. Myers. I don't know who did the word art, I 'm so sorry. Drop me a line and I'll credit you.

If you like it well enough to download, please leave me a comment at the bottom of this post as I have disabled 4shared comments. Please support this blog by shopping my PayPal store. God bless you!Download my Consider The Ant collection here. Check out my TERMS OF USE here.The password is jesuschristislord.DigifreeCraftCraveCraftCrave

It's windfall time for you! I've been told that some of my computer woes are probably a result of overloading my hard drives, soooo I've been going through and (wince) ... DELETING!!! In doing so, I've collected lots of my favorite designs that I haven't offered to you yet and I've gathered them up into a bunch of new kits just overflowing with a hodge podge of highly unusual and gorgeous goodies for your layouts! Here they are at teensey tiny prices so everyone can have them! Hint - the round elements make good frames or, my favorite, tuck them behind things!!! Here's the round holly and berry element as I used it in my Christmas book that I recently shared with you:Most of these kits have elements that go with other kits in the store - just more cool stuff to use with them!Sequins & Beads Galore $2.50

Delicious Touches $3.99 (Has elements that go with Pods 'n' Berries 1 & 2, Ribbon Bee Circles, Marbles and has the Transparent Bead Filled Alpha which is a 2-toned design in blue and gold in this kit.)

If you like it well enough to download, please leave me a comment at the bottom of this post as I have disabled 4shared comments. Please support this blog by shopping my PayPal store. God bless you!Download here. Check out my TERMS OF USE here.The password is jesuschristislord.DigifreeCraftCraveCraftCrave

I'm so tickled with how this turned out that I wanted to share it with you. I hope it inspires you! This is the first time I have used someone else's lesson ideas, but I saw this at http://www.daniellesplace.com/html/freeantlesson.html and it was so excellent that I'm doing it this Sunday, Lord willing.

I'm not going to put the actual lesson material here as it's not entirely mine, but it's teaching, Proverbs 6:6, "Go to the ant, thou sluggard; consider her ways, and be wise." She several activities to make the lesson engaging and memorable and these are the ones I'm doing.

This is everything you will need beside the actual lesson, which is of course the most important part! (I organize everything in wonderful baggies - what a blessing!)
I made ants to lay in a trail away from our classroom. At the end of the trail will be the blue (I had leftovers) cards upside down. Each child will follow the trail and choose a card to bring back to class. When all the words have been retrieved, we will build the sentence which says, "We can do what we should without being told." Just like the ants do.

Here you also see note papers, lined and with ants marching around them where each child will write what things they will try to do without being told. Parents could respond as to which they actually do the next week and it could return to class for reward.
The diagonal printed squares in the picture able will be put in the mouths of black construction paper ants that will have pipe cleaner legs and antenna and googly eyes. The scripture, Proverbs 6:6, is written on it and will serve as their take home to memorize it for next week's memory work.
Next you see the memory game I made of cardstock. Ants on one side and things they can "do without being told" on the other - two cards for each. There are 30 and I used normal things children should be doing at home and added several to reinforce what I've been teaching them about worship and proper behavior reverencing God. It's played just like the store bought game - all cards ant side up and mixed up. Take turns turning two cards over looking for a match. If you match you take them both and have another turn. When you don't match you turn them upside down again and everyone tries to remember where each was so they can make a match in the future.
Now for the really fun part! A reader commented on her post about this idea, but of course, I took it waaaay beyond and I just love it! Every child will get a paper plate, a popsicle stick with a magnet hot glued to one end, one of the brown construction paper pieces and four cheerios.

We'll do this first so it has time to dry a bit before the end of class. I just traced the blue glass (isn't it gorgeous?) for my circles. They will cut the circle out, then cut in to the center on the line and cut out the door I drew on each. Then they will twist it into an "ant hill" and staple it shut. Glue doesn't dry quickly enough for such a short class and it's a stressful joining, so pretty or not, staple it will be! Then they will glue the ant hill to their plates.
Then we'll play a game with them! Not a mindless game, but one that reinforces what we are told to learn from the ant - his diligence and doing the right thing without being told, his being prepared. Everyone will put four Cheerios their on the plate on the oppossite side of the ant hill. then they will put their ant on the plate and position the magnet under the plate beneath him. Using the popsicle stick we'll race to move the ants to push all the Cheerios into the ant hill. So cute and such fun! :)
You're probably wondering how to make the sweet little ants... The comment I read just cut cardboard ants and put two brads through it for legs and colored it with a marker. Instead, I got tiny black brads from Hobby Lobby. They actually had two sizes! I opened the legs a little and put a bit of glue in and then pressed a toothpick between them up against the body. I did this for three brads per ant and put them as close together as possible. Why the toothpick? Added strength. I decided that just joining them touching each other wouldn't be sturdy enough. When they dried I snipped the toothpick ends off and used a Sharpie marker to color it all black. If I were doing it again, I'd color them before assembling. Then I spread the legs enough to be a stable base, so they won't flip over when the magnet is added. Perfectionist that I am, I wanted to snip the "legs" off the front and back brads and glue them to the midsection to be anatomically correct, but they just flip over with magnet. :(

I have so much material in the lesson and so many fun activities that this will be two weeks of lessons. I think it will stay with them better having two lessons in a row and we can see how they are doing at home too!
For today's gift, I'm going to save you soooo many hours of designing! I'm giving you my memory game, the notes they fill out with what they will do without being told, the ants for the trail and the memory verse note to put in the ant's mouth. I can't give you the big ant's body as it's not mine, but it looks like this and you can draw your own, 6 3/4" long and 2" wide, punching tiny holes in the top side for the pipe cleaner legs and then glue the second body shape under it to hide the pipe cleaners under the body, but don't glue the mouth shut! The memory verse note goes into it! Now go and share all this along with a sound lesson on Proverbs 6:6 and God bless you for doing it! Be sure to send others here to the blog to download their own.
If you like it well enough to download, please leave me a comment at the bottom of this post as I have disabled 4shared comments. Please support this blog by shopping my PayPal store. God bless you!Download here. Check out my TERMS OF USE here.The password is jesuschristislord.DigifreeCraftCraveCraftCrave

They say this is the third biggest snow in our area of Alabama's HISTORY! I know it's the biggest since the early 80's when my youngest daughter, missing snow from back home in Chicago, went to bed the night before her Jan. 6th birthday praying for snow. We woke to about 2' of snow!!! Ruined her birthday party as only one friend who also was from the North came, but was an astounding and very fun memory she's talking about even now as her part of the country is bracing for this storm to reach them tonight.

BTW when I ventured into the garden yesterday afternoon, it was knee deep on me! :) It's been decades since I stood knee deep in God's glistening and pristine new fallen snow! You are sooooo awesome God!

Before going to bed last night I looked down our street as the sun was setting and this is what I saw. (It's a streetlight you see reflected in the road.) I've never seen a snowman with dreadlocks and headphones, but it was so adorable I thought you might enjoy him too. Haven't seen the front of him yet...maybe I should don my double-bagged "boots" from yesterday and go for a walk? It's still snowing, but so fine it isn't accumulating as quickly as it's melting.Ok, mystery solved! Here you go - the front side!Here's our little Eskimo Boo in Daddy's arms as he was measuring snow on top the cars yesterday. Isn't she just tooooo cute in her coat? (That's the "fur" edged hood you are seeing.) Yes, we thoguht dressing dogs was ridiculous until we got this tiny doll and soon realized that at 4.5 lbs. full grown, in our house kept at 59 degrees so we can pay the heating bills, she NEEDS a warm coat when she's not snuggled into my coat and sweaters with me. She's nothing but skin and bones - literally and just inches above the cold floor!Here, I unzipped a lyer to give you a peek...On Christmas day we had some snow (much less than now) and my oldest daughter and I made this snowman at her new house. LOL - Alabama snowmen are always "dirty" as the ground isn't frozen when it snows and when we gather the snow for our snowmen you get leaves, twigs and dirt along with it! Their dad spread plastic in his yard the night before our storm so they could make a CLEAN snowman!!! How cleaver was that! Here she used acorns and acorn caps for the face.Today I have a cool 8" Stacked Element for you. It's highly detailed and dimensional and will be great tucked behind things or as a frame...use your imagination and enjoy!If you like it well enough to download, please leave me a comment at the bottom of this post as I have disabled 4shared comments. Please support this blog by shopping my PayPal store. God bless you!Download here for 24 hours, then available in my store. If you can't find it, e-mail me. Check out my TERMS OF USE here.The password is jesuschristislord.DigifreeCraftCraveCraftCrave

On Christmas morn we woke to the first white Christmas in 26 years in our area, and it wasn't just a flurries! It was so beautiful and surprisingly lasted several days before melting. Normally any snow that strays this far south (Alabama) melts within an hour.Well, last night was an even bigger surprise and it's still coming down! They say it's cold enough this one will last too. At midnight I took this picture after only 2 hrs. of snowing. It looks to me to be more than a foot on top our table at that time. It's so amazingly silent outside with everything and everyone at a halt. Peace.This morning when I let little Boo out to do her business (4.5 lbs.), she only made this first step before she was encased in snow and when she recovered from the shock, struggled her way back in the door. She still hasn't done her business, but is curled up inside my coat sleeping, as usual, while I work!Southern boots - double bagged!Ok, now for what you came for - my gift for you today is this gorgeous kit of Tinsel Papers for Christmas and New Years. I offered it recently, but again CraftCrave didn't pick it up and so very few got to snag this stunning paper kit, so I'm offering it again hoping more of you can enjoy it. I love it! Hope you do too! Happy New Year!If you like it well enough to download, please leave me a comment at the bottom of this post as I have disabled 4shared comments. Please support this blog by shopping my PayPal store. God bless you!Download here for 24 hours, then available in my store. If you can't find it, e-mail me. Check out my TERMS OF USE here.The password is jesuschristislord.DigifreeCraftCraveCraftCrave